Uday Prakash

This is a translation of three short stories of the Hindi author Uday Prakash by Jason Grunebaum. The central theme of these stories is highlight the various injustices and the hardships faced by the lower classes in India.

In the first story "The walls of Delhi" , a sweeper finds counterfeit currency hidden in the wall of a gymnasium where he goes cleaning everyday. He enjoys his wealth for some time till the system catches up with him.

Uday Prakash's most famous story, "Mohandas" deals with a low caste man with no connections,who fails to get employment in a coal mine after he aces the entrance exam. Later on he finds out that some other person has secured the same job using his certificates and his identity. He struggles to bring this fact to the authorities on various levels but is defeated by corruption every time.

The last story "Mangosil" deals with a couple who live in poverty and after having several abortions give birth to a kid with a large head (meningocele). After the doctors have declared that the kid will not survive beyond two years, the kid lives on and becomes peculiar in his ways. The story ends unexpectedly and has a sci-fi component.

I'm a reader who knows both Hindi and English. When I read this book I can appreciate the things which are lost in translation. The author also has a tendency to go off on a tangent. But overall it's a nice if sometimes a disturbing read.… (mer)

Although all three stories in this collection are somewhat or very depressing, they are written with a characteristic verve and have enough humor so that reading them is not an unpleasant experience. Prakash looks at various people living on the brink of poverty in and around Delhi as they come up against injustice and corruption, occasionally have a bit of luck, and try to get on with their lives. He has a loose, conversational way of narrating that I quite liked and also takes time to develop the lives and worlds of his characters – the main plots often wouldn’t start for a number of pages.

The first story, “The Walls of Delhi”, opens with a look at a range of food cart operators hawking their wares and scraping by, noting that occasionally one of the regulars would disappear and never be heard from again. One such disappearance, the narrator tells us, was Ramnivas Pasiya. An unhappily married janitor, Ramnivas finds his life turned around when he discovers some dirty money at his job one day. He spoils his mistress and gives his family a better life, but unfortunately, his luck doesn’t last. The second story is about “Mohandas”, who, despite his low caste status, is extremely intelligent and graduated with high marks. Unfortunately, he cannot find work since he has no connections and no money to bribe his way. His fight against the system becomes increasingly precarious. In the last story, “Mangosil”, a poor couple, Chandrakant and Shobha, have a happy marriage but no children until they have Suri, who has a dangerously oversized head and a preternatural intelligence.

There’s some meandering in all of the stories and I really liked that here. Ramnivas isn’t the most sympathetic character, but I loved reading the commentary from the food sellers and how he is suddenly flooded with family members upon becoming wealthy. “Mohandas” was a bit Kafka-esque, in that a large portion of the plot has Mohandas trying to prove that he is really Mohandas when someone else steals his stellar academic credentials (leading him to question his own identity). It also reminded me of some more straightforward tales of good men going to desperate lengths for justice, as in “Michael Kohlhaas” by Heinrich von Kleist. The narrator intrudes a lot in this story – he claims to know Mohandas, makes overt comparisons to Gandhi, and occasionally has asides where he describes what’s going on in the world, with various examples of corruption in India. Even though “Mohandas” is a pretty unhappy story, there is enough humor and glimpses of everyday life so that it doesn’t feel like series of miserable events. “Mangosil” isn’t just about a sick and precocious child – the author describes Shobha’s horrific first marriage, the couple’s happy life in a slum, the various changes to the family, and the gentrification and inequality throughout Delhi that affects Shobha and Chandrakant as well as the narrator. I would be happy to read more by Prakash and would recommend this collection.… (mer)

What is the colour of fear? Is it the colour of dirt, or of stone? Is it yellow, charcoal? Or the colour of ash left over from a burning coal – ash that coats the coal still glowing red-hot, that still has its heat! Or a colour that masks a terrifying silence behind it? A small tear that exposes a frightful scream suspended behind.Have you ever seen the bloodshot, dying eyes of a fish thrown from an ocean or a river, onto a sandy bank or shore? That’s the colour.

The Walls of Delhi is a collection of three stories originally written by Uday Prakash in Hindi and translated into English by Jason Grunebaum. In the title story The Walls of Delhi, a sweeper discovers a cache of black money and escapes to see the Taj Mahal with his underage mistress. In the story Mohandas, a lower caste man struggles to reclaim his identity stolen by an upper caste identity thief. In Mangosil, a baby is born to an elderly couple with a rare disease in which the baby’s head gets bigger and bigger as he gets smarter and smarter, while his poverty stricken family struggles for a cure.

Read the complete review at http://www.thebookoutline.com/2013/02/book-review-walls-of-delhi.html… (mer)